The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-03-12
WOMAN'S HEARTLESSNESS.

WOMAN'S HEARTLESSNESS
In one of the most widely circulated
newspapers the fashionable news from
Paris begins: birds are worn more than
ever" Birds "are worm Pitiful phrasel
Sentence of deadly signifeapcel "Birds
are worn. AS if that were final, as if
all woman must follow one another like
flock of sheep over wall, and forget
reason, forget the human heart within,
forget yerything but the empty pride of
being Sin the fashion" All, me, my fire.
fecked oriole, watching your airy cradle
from the friendly elm bough swinging,
go get yourself an inky coat. Your beau
ty makes you but target for the accurs-
ed gun that skaters your lovely life,
quenches your delicious voice, destroys
your love, your bliss, your dutiful cares,
your whole beautiful being, that your
dead body may disfgure some woman's
head and call all eyes to gaze at her!
But no that will not save you'll Black
birds are not safe, they "are worn."
Carrion crows "are worn," unsavory
scavengers though they be. No matter
upon what they may have fed-they fare
worn" Soar, swift sea-swallow- would
it could be millions Of miles away from
the haunts of men, to the uttermost
parts of the earth, and the ocean carry
your grace, your slender loneliness of
chapo vot1r w, n loos dat;oaox, - I;,.k o,.l
tone of color, soft, wondrous, like gray
cloud and silvery snowy! dear and
beautiful creature; seek the center of the
storm, the heart of the arctic cold, the
winter blast = they are not SO unkind as
woman's vanity. Do not see you every
day, your mocking semblance writhing as
it in agony around female heads-still
and stark, sharp wings and tail pointing
in stiff distress to heaven, your dried and
CHASTITY head and beak dragged down to
point to the face below, as if saying, "She
did it?" The alabatross of the Ancient
Mariner in not more dreadful. Yesterday
I saw three of You on one hat! Three
terms at once, a horrible confusion OF
death and dismay.
Does any woman imagine these wither-
ed corpses (cured with arsenic) which
she loves to carry about are beauti-
full? Not SO; the birds lost their beau
ty with their lives. To-day saw mat
woven of warblers' heads, spiked all over
its surface with sharp beaks, set up on a
bonnet and borne aloft by its possessor in
pride. Twenty murders in onel and the
face beneath bland and satisfied, for are
not "Birds to be worn moro than ever?"
Flit ssndpiper, from the seas margin to
some loneliness remote and safe from the
noble race of mani No longer in the soft
May twilight call from cove to cove along
the shore in notes that seem to breathe the
very spirit of tender JOY, OF happy love,
OF sweet content; tones that mingleso di-
vinely with the warm waves murmur,
with the south winds balm, and sound in
music through the dusk, long after the
last crimson flush of sunset has faded
from the sky. Year after year you come
back to make your nest in the place you
know and love, but you shall not live
your humble, blissful, dutiful life; you
shall not guard your treasured home,
nor rejoice when your little ones break
the silence with their first cry to you for
food. You shall not shelter and protect
and care for them with the same divine
Instinct You share with human mothers
No, some woman wants your corpse to
carry on her head. You shall die that
vanity, that Fashion" may live.
/ fear we no longer deserve these gold
en- gifts of God. I would the birds could |
all emigrate to some friendlier planet, |
peopled by nobler race than ours, where
they could live their sweet lives unmo-
Tested, and be treated with the respect,
the consideration and the grateful love |
which are their due. For we have almost
forfeited our right to the blessing of their
presence.
But still we venture to hope for bet
ter future, still the Audubon and other
societies work with heart and soul TO pro-
feet and save them, and We trust yet to
see the day when women, one and all,
will look upon the wearing of birds in its
proper light, namely, as a sign of heart
lessness and mark of ignominy and re-
proach.-Celia TtaTter, in the audubon